transducing the genome information anarchy and revolution in the biomedical sciences

[...]... by the level of one protein, and the y-coordinate is determined by the level of the second protein A cell sample could then be classified as being high in protein 1 and low in protein 2, or high in both proteins 1 and 2, etc Thus, having two data points per tumor enables more categories than having just one data point However, variations in just one or two proteins may not be sufficient to distinguish... delineated The gene dictates the protein sequence, which influences the shape and chemical properties of the hemoglobin complex, which in turn determine the shape of the red blood cells The sickle-cell hemoglobin variant tends to give the oxygen-carrying sacks a sickle shape, causing them to burst upon passing through narrow capillaries, thus reducing the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood and bringing... effect on medicine and agriculture In addition, it is likely to bring about significant changes in our understanding of ourselves, of other human beings, and of other living creatures Change can be a raging bull, frightening in its power and unpredictability The pages that follow are an attempt to grasp the bull by its horns, to understand the nature and origin of the “New Biology,” and to deliver... Receptor proteins on the surface of muscle and bone cells recognize the structure of the hormone They read the message, process the information, and pass on their own signal to other molecules within the cell These molecules do the same, and eventually this network of signals results in cell growth division The growth hormone molecule has thereby told the cells to grow and divide All the molecules... thought of as information carriers The implications of this are profound The pattern of pro- INFORMATION AND LIFE 17 teins that a cell produces is not just information about the cell; it is a message from the cell Proteins communicate among themselves and with other molecules within the cell Those on the cell surface and those secreted by the cell are messages sent to other cells The Argonne group intercepted... industry, and creating a dramatically new understanding of life I also examine the human genome itself, the forces that have shaped it, and what it may reveal about ourselves The Human Genome Project and other sequencing initiatives provide us with the information content of the genome, a starting point for countless new analyses Within the three-billion-letter sequence we can detect the remnants of genes... sequencing machines developed by Michael Hunkapiller and colleagues at Applied Biosystems Inc On the other hand, Hunkapiller’s work originated in Leroy Hood’s government-backed laboratory at xiv INTRODUCTION the California Institute of Technology In the chapters that follow I examine the forces, people, and ideas that have been propelling the search for human genes, shaping the genomics industry, and. .. research initiative to come close to matching the size and scale of the U.S Apollo space initiatives The Argonne group’s cancer results, the culmination of nearly a decade of work, could have been interpreted as proof of the principles behind the Human Protein Index Instead, most scientists took little or no notice of their report, which was published in 1984 in the rather obscure journal Clinical Chemistry.4... ill It brings us out of the Dark Ages In 1948 Linus Pauling initiated a new era in biomedical science when he discovered that a particular heritable variation in a single component of the hemoglobin protein complex results in sickle-cell anemia, an often-deadly blood disease Pauling was able to distinguish the protein variant from others and causatively link it to the disease It was an extraordinary triumph... chemical entities These are the molecules of life and the subject of countless research studies They can be understood in terms of their physical structures and their chemical properties However, they can also be understood in terms of the information that they convey What kind of molecular messages are being sent within us? Who is the sender and receiver and what is being said? Genes are the most obvious . alt=""